ESV - Job Chapter 7 to 8

7 Job Continues: My Life Has No Hope

7:1 “Has not man a hard service on earth, and are not his days like the days of a hired hand? ²Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like a hired hand who looks for his wages, ³so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me. ⁴When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’ But the night is long, and I am full of tossing till the dawn. ⁵My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh. ⁶My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and come to their end without hope.

⁷“Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good. ⁸The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more; while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone. ⁹As the cloud fades and vanishes, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up; ¹⁰he returns no more to his house, nor does his place know him anymore.

¹¹“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. ¹²Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me? ¹³When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ ¹⁴then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, ¹⁵so that I would choose strangling and death rather than my bones. ¹⁶I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath. ¹⁷What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him, ¹⁸visit him every morning and test him every moment? ¹⁹How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit? ²⁰If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you? ²¹Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be.”

8 Bildad Speaks: Job Should Repent

8:1 Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:

²“How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth be a great wind? ³Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right? ⁴If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression. ⁵If you will seek God and plead with the Almighty for mercy, ⁶if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore your rightful habitation. ⁷And though your beginning was small, your latter days will be very great.

⁸“For inquire, please, of bygone ages, and consider what the fathers have searched out. ⁹For we are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow. ¹⁰Will they not teach you and tell you and utter words out of their understanding?

¹¹“Can papyrus grow where there is no marsh? Can reeds flourish where there is no water? ¹²While yet in flower and not cut down, they wither before any other plant. ¹³Such are the paths of all who forget God; the hope of the godless shall perish. ¹⁴His confidence is severed, and his trust is a spider’s web.^[1]¹⁵He leans against his house, but it does not stand; he lays hold of it, but it does not endure. ¹⁶He is a lush plant before the sun, and his shoots spread over his garden. ¹⁷His roots entwine the stone heap; he looks upon a house of stones. ¹⁸If he is destroyed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, ‘I have never seen you.’ ¹⁹Behold, this is the joy of his way, and out of the soil others will spring.

²⁰“Behold, God will not reject a blameless man, nor take the hand of evildoers. ²¹He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouting. ²²Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.”

[1] Hebrew house